Antipiracy Service Targets eBooks on File Sharing Sites

The Curtis Agency and E-Reads will tackle eBook piracy as a team, making it easier for authors to find pirated material and send take-down letters.

They have enlisted the technological assistance of Muso TNT, a company that targets piracy for other media industry clients. Muso developed a system that targets popular file sharing sites like RapidShare and Megaupload.

Here’s more from the article: “Using the Muso technology, legitimate content providers authorize the antipiracy service to launch search engine ‘spiders’ to crawl over the Internet and detect unauthorized files. A significant feature is that the search criterion is by author, not by title. As the spiders locate pirated files, they store the results on a password-protected login page for review.”

According to Muso’s technological director Anthony Damasco, the system works well. In a period of 45 minutes, Damasco was able to track down 3,500 illegal files and give the orders to have them removed.

Some of the authors at the Curtis Agency include romance novelist Janet Dailey, crime fiction writer Colin Cotterill and YA fiction writer D.J. MacHale. Do you think major publishers and agents will sign up with Muso in the near future? (via Don Linn)